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Downtown Lancaster is experiencing a dining boom. Several restaurants — including
Diamond Jim’s
Pizza, the Lodge and the Ale House 1890 gastropub — have opened in the city’s historic
buildings.

Table 1, a breakfast and lunch spot, is among the latest to join them.

It opened on July 4 at 157 W. Main St., in the former Olde Cottage space.

Table 1 is owned by J.M. Matos, a classically trained French chef who has worked for nearly four
decades in the restaurant and hospitality industry. He spent many years as a cruise-line chef but,
when he fell in love with a central Ohio woman, he decided a change was in order.

“It was time to get off the boat and come home,” Matos said.

Matos wasn’t ready to leave the restaurant business, though. When he arrived in Lancaster three
years ago, he opened a catering and personal-chef company called Country Gourmet, which is doing
well and now operates under the Table 1 brand name. He decided recently that the next step was to
open a restaurant.

“I saw there was an opportunity here to do something different, and we came up with the concept
of bringing back progressive American classics,” Matos said.

Table 1’s menu focuses on familiar comfort food with gourmet twists, “like grilled cheese and
tomato soup,” Matos said. “It’s a traditional comfort-food meal, but we use smoked tomatoes in the
bisque. It’s a subtle change, but it makes an impact.”

The restaurant makes many items in-house daily, such as the breakfast sausage. Matos also smokes
the meat for pulled-pork and prime-beef dishes.

The menu features salads, sandwiches, hamburgers and breakfast items. A children’s menu features
waffle sandwiches with fillings such as peanut butter and jelly and honey and banana, as well as a
cheeseburger roll-up.

Matos plans to change the menu two or three times a year to keep it fresh.

He chose the location for Table 1 because it fills several needs: It’s downtown, centrally
located and near local-government buildings.

“We had many great meals there when it was the Olde Cottage,” Matos said. When it became
available, “I saw it as a blank canvas. It didn’t have much decor, and it wasn’t intimidating in
size and structure.”

He gave it a quick 60-day renovation that included exposing the kitchen.

“Open kitchens are in vogue,” he said. “People want to see what you’re doing and hear the
clanging.”

Although Lancaster has become home to a growing number of national chains in recent years, Matos
said he still sees a lot of opportunity for independent restaurants.

Lancaster is like a “diamond that is overlooked in the jewelry case,” he said. “There is more
room for indies to come downtown and partake in the experience and the renaissance of the new
guard.”

Restaurateurs who want to succeed there need to keep in mind Lancaster customers’ tastes, he
said.

“This is a good, slow-paced, identifiable-food type of community, where comfort food still
involves bacon and cheddar,” Matos said.

Table 1 is open from 8 a.m. to 3 p.m. every day.

Off the menu

• The Market Italian Village opened on Thursday at 1022 Summit St. in Italian Village. The
combination neighborhood fresh market, cafe and restaurant is owned by the same company that
operates the Crest Gastropub and Ethyl & Tank.

• Kingy’s Pizza Pub’s Reu-bert sandwich, which holds 2 pounds of corned beef and pastrami, has
received an honorable mention from the Restaurant Hospitality industry newspaper’s Best Sandwich in
America contest.

Obit file

Rotelli Pizza Pasta Perfect at 1344 Cherry Bottom Rd. in Gahanna has closed. The website is
still operational, but the listed phone number is disconnected.